She turned to Petronius, wanting to share these new feelings with someone, but his eyes looked straight through her and she realised what he already had. Though death didn't separate them, his mortality did. He occupied the land of the living, and she was part of a different realm.
"Well," he said to Narcissus. "That was memorable." His voice shook, but not too much.
Narcissus nodded. "We should find Claudius. He'll need help to clean up - rebuild."
Petronius looked around him, at the wreckage in the streets. "But first, we should find a bar." He walked away, stepping nimbly over corpses with Narcissus at his side and Nero slung high on his shoulders. The little boy giggled and pointed at the mutilated remains and Petronius shifted him till he was facing away from them, towards the rising sun.
Boda watched them till they turned the corner. There was much she needed to do, a burden she hadn't asked for and wasn't sure she could shoulder. She took one last second to enjoy the dawn on the streets of Rome, then closed her eyes and went elsewhere.
EPILOGUE
She was glad to find him surrounded by his friends. There was a feast laid out on the tables and though he didn't seem to have the strength to eat, he made sure that everyone else did. She lingered at the back of the crowd for a while, watching him.
"Well, Petronius," one of the men said, a fair-haired youth who might have been of her own birth people. "She was very tall."
"Just the right height," Petronius told him, "for what I had in mind," and the men and women around him laughed.
He'd changed, of course. He was a man now, the soft lines of his face sharpened, with threads of grey in his long black curls. His eyes were the same brown, though, and after a moment they picked her out in the crowd. Shock transmuted into a moment of unguarded pleasure. Then his gaze dropped and he quirked a private smile.
"My friends," he said. "I fear it's time for you to go."
There were expressions of regret, some genuine, some fake. Some of them looked embarrassed as they brushed past her, and glad of the reprieve. They didn't know what to say to a man on the day of his death.
When they were alone, she went to sit beside him. His arms hung limply over the sides of his chair, the blood draining slowly from his wrists to the bowls beneath them.
"Boda," he said. "Or is that no longer your name?"
"It's still one of them," she told him. Close to, the signs of age were clearer on him, the fine network of wrinkles just beginning around his eyes. And his smile was more cautious than it had been, though still not bitter. He'd chosen to spend his last day with company and in laughter, and she thought that he couldn't have changed that much.
"I wondered if you'd come," he said. "I hoped I'd see you again - at least this one last time."
"I would have stopped it if I could," she told him.
He laughed. "I tried to. I don't think you would have approved. I made myself Nero's closest friend, the one he could always rely on - who never questioned him. Even Seneca showed more backbone than I did, in the end. Did you know that Claudius called the old bastard back from exile to tutor Nero when he adopted him as his son?"
Boda nodded. "I heard Seneca had time to consider the error of his ways while he was away. That he wrote some thoughts on how to face your mortality. I always wondered why Claudius didn't just have him killed."
Petronius shrugged, then winced, as the motion jarred the wounds in his wrists. "I think he was so pleased to see Narcissus in the land of the living again, it put him in a forgiving mood. Narcissus rose very high, but I expect you know that too."
"Claudius freed him," Boda said, "and named him praetor. Gave him more power than almost any man in Rome. But Narcissus picked the wrong side in the battle for the succession, and Nero killed him - he killed them both."
"The boy's sanity snapped in the underworld. I should never have taken him there. But Seneca, he had some control over him. Nero wasn't a bad Caesar, while that old bore held sway."
"And then Nero killed him too," Boda said.
Petronius laughed weakly. "Last year. While I - the court favourite, Nero's Arbiter of Elegance - lived on. I thought I could cheat fate, but... Well, you know best of all how impossible that is. And now here I am, opening my veins on Caesar's orders. I've seen my last summer, and it was only my thirty-ninth."
His eyes glazed for a moment and she knew that his death was near. Then the bright light that had always shone from them switched back on and his hand twitched, gesturing towards the table. "I've written my last words too, a letter to Nero telling him just exactly what I think of him - and reminding him of all the fun we had together, most of which I suspect he'd rather forget."
Boda smiled. "I'm sure it's a masterpiece. I read your book too, you know."
"Did you? And what did you think of it?" He barely had the energy to lift his eyelids now, but she saw that he really cared about her answer.
"You turned our story into a comedy. A sex comedy."
"A boy can dream," he said. "Besides, who wants to read about the undead?"
"But you captured the voice of the people. The ordinary people, whom no one has written of before."
"You taught me to listen to them." He sighed, and she knew that it was almost over. "I've bedded a thousand men, Boda, and a thousand women. But in all these years, I've loved only you."
"I know," she said. "I felt it."
And now the man she spoke to stood beside her, the empty shell of his body still and silent on the chair in front.
"Is that me?" he asked. "I really am as handsome as I thought."
She laughed, but the sound died when she saw the expression on his face. "It was a short life," she told him, "but a full one. Like mine."
"And unlike most people, I've already been where I'm now going. But..." He looked away. "You can't join me there."
"That's true," she said. "The gates of death remain closed to me. So perhaps it would be best if you stayed here."
She smiled, as his head snapped round to face her. "I can do that?"
She shrugged. "Osiris owes me a favour. He's said that as long as your words live in this world, so may you."
"As long as my words live..." He looked into the distance, then switched his gaze to watch her from the corner of his eye. "That seems fair. And what shall we do, Boda, with all this time we have?"
"We should visit Vali. You're as much his as mine, after all."
"You speak to him?"
"Our paths cross. Love is a force for chaos too - I'm not sure Sopdet or Osiris ever really understood that."
He turned to face her completely, and now his expression was entirely serious. His spirit looked a little younger than his corporeal remains, but still a man, with a man's knowledge behind his eyes. "Why?"
She took his hand. "You've bound me to the mortal plane, and my mortal self - your memories of me, and your feelings. You help me to remember how it felt to be a living woman, and I don't want to forget. I don't want to become like Sopdet. You've earned a part of my godhead if you want it."
"I can be the demigod of pornography," he said.
"Of passion and pleasure."
"Why?" he said again.
She looked at his dead body one last time, then turned to leave. "Because the world's a more cheerful place with you in it."
THE END
Rebecca Levene has been a writer and editor for sixteen years. In that time she has storylined Emmerdale, written a children's book about Captain Cook, several science fiction and horror novels, a novelisation and making-of book for Rebellion's Rogue Trooper video game, and a Beginner's Guide to Poker. She has also edited a range of media tie-in books. She was associate producer on the ITV1 drama Wild at Heart, story consultant on the Chinese soap opera Joy Luck Street, script writer on Family Affairs and Is Harry on the Boat? and is part of the writing team for Channel 5's Swinging. She has had two sit-coms optioned, one by the BBC and one by Talkback, and currently has a detective drama in development with Granada Televi
sion.
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